It’s official. As of next July 1, your sister or your uncle can’t send you spam.

The family relationship exemption — married partners and children can send you spam, siblings and other relatives can’t — is one of the many regulations the federal government has finally introduced to guide the enforcement of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation or CASL.

The law, which Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, describes as “one of the most stringent anti-spam regimes in the world,” regulates spam, or as it is legally known, “commercial electronic messages” or CEMs.

Parliament passed the legislation in 2010, and we’ve been waiting a long time for the final regulations. It took until last week for the government to release the final set. Most of these kick in July 1, but there are two other provisions that enter into force later. Rules relating to the unsolicited installation of computer programs or software come into force on Jan. 15, 2015 and — pay attention, class action lawyers — sections that grant individuals a private right of action to sue spammers for non-compliance take effect on July 1, 2017.

One of the things that slowed down the arrival of regulations was the complexity of setting up some reasonable exceptions to the law.

Companies and lawyers have been waiting for these regs for a long time. The private sector hit the roof over previous set of draft rules, complaining they went too far to interrupt legitimate marketing efforts. The regs unleashed Dec. 4 address some of those concerns, but lawyers think they’re still too stringent.

“Most industry participants will likely view the changes as not going far enough to overcome what some commentators have described as ‘red tape’ impediments on doing business,” writes Michael Fekete of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

“The new regime promises to have a significant negative impact on many businesses that have come to rely on electronic marketing,” says David Elder of Stikeman Elliott LLP.

A perfect example of the regulatory complexity is the government’s efforts to decide how broadly to extend an exemption for unsolicited messages sent between family members. The government grappled over what “family” means: siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. (I’m guessing the government doesn’t get a lot of unsolicited email from ancestry.com).

The government narrowed the definition of “family relationship” to include only individuals related through marriage, a common-law partnership or a legal parent-child relationship, a note by Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP explains. “This definition no longer allows for CEMs to be sent between siblings or between relatives such as aunts and uncles to nieces and nephews without complying with CASL.”

Lawyers are concerned the July 1 date doesn’t give companies enough time to comply, especially given the apparent complexity of the rules. And these rules aren’t just limited to Canadian senders. “CASL will apply to all commercial electronic messages sent from or accessed in Canada, including emails, messages sent to social networking accounts, and texts,” write Lauren MacLeod and Carolyn Stamegna of Goodmans LLP.

The delay for computer programs recognizes the problem in getting those aligned with the law. The legal question is whether the act of installing some computer programs automatically grants a software developer permission to send the user messages. “Organizations may wish to consider whether their disclosure and opt-out regarding cookies and other similar technologies is sufficient to rely on this deemed consent,” writes Margot Patterson of Dentons Canada LLP.

There’s a lot at stake here for marketers. The law introduces significant “administrative monetary penalties” or AMPs for those who violate the law: up to $10-million for corporations and $1-million for individuals. Three government agencies will enforce the law: the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Meanwhile, those of us on the receiving end of this stuff have until July 1 to figure out where to score unsolicited supplies of herbal v1agra or how to recover all the millions we’ve apparently won from the European lotteries we didn’t enter.

If Friday's gains are anything to go by, investors are champing at the bit

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